


A Place on Earth With You

by theuglyfriend



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Colonel Sassacre - Freeform, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, What went on with the alpha guardians?, do not repost to another site, mentions of experimentation, you know how this ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:01:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24901996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theuglyfriend/pseuds/theuglyfriend
Summary: You were born into eternity as an Empress and you will end with Time as a slave. Two more alien wigglers and a second iteration of a human husband and the blink of time that was their lives don't matter at all except that you raised them. And that, despite everything, your Heir stayed with you until his end.
Relationships: Alpha John Egbert & The Condesce, The Condesce & John Egbert, The Condesce/Colonel Sassacre
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	A Place on Earth With You

**Author's Note:**

> working title: mother mother

You're glaring at the screaming, green-eyed, female human grub when your human husband (twice over, not that he really remembers) comes back with another one. Your first impression of the new one is incessant giggles along with your husband's silly noises for the brat's entertainment.

The new alien blob, despite being one of the main points of your job on this horrible second iteration of a planet, isn't the first thing you think about; you think of your human not-matesprit and that he's not dead this time. You feel something. That you won't find the remains of his body under a meteor and a crying, horrible child with fucking guns, that now he can take care of the wigglers this time around. It might be relief.

Said husband's yelp finally makes you turn around and you see him wince, still grinning still, as he struggles to detangle the tiny pudgy hand from his stupid face hair growth. 

"Reely? Ya brine me back anotter one?" you ask him like it's his fault you're destined to care for these children, like that isn't part of your duty on this planet to your master.

The Colonel shoots you a blinding grin that's still in the fist of the baby and steamrolls over you like you do him most of the time, "The more the merrier, my darling!"

Behind you the little green female is still screaming and you refrain from screaming right back just because that's beneath you. When the Colonel goes to pick her up with his other arm she shuts up just to spite you.

"This one's name is John," your husband tells you and you can tell he's already in love with this child like he was with the girl in his arms he found days prior. 

(You know the boy's name is John like you knew the girl's name was Jade before your husband found her days ago and like you know their children's names. Because once upon a time the ones who will become your grandchildren were your children. Because some version of these children will become the bane of your master's existence.)

"John," you say and the child smiles up at you toothless.

The smile remains even when you don't smile back.

* * *

The Colonel is everything you remembered him as and more if only since this time around he's still alive.

He's so soft and weak and willing to put his heart out to everything. It's... pitiable. You promised yourself you wouldn't get attached a second time around but you failed again.

You couldn't help but check on him just once more when you arrived in the second version of this world. He's not a player nor even a game piece like the Guardians are so he's no more constant than the rest of the world but when he saw you in your pathetic human disguise and showed his horrid, blunt buck teeth in a grin you stayed. It made sense, he was easy to get on board the first time around and you did need a human male husband because of the bizarre and stupid customs of this species. And the fact that Sassacre's smile for you never changed even when you revealed your true, glorious form that you know other inferiors (even among your own late species, or maybe especially them) cower from... well it didn't hurt.

Like all humans your husband is still strange to you, with scarily transparent skin you can see his revolting blood through and a blink of an eye lifespan and the way he looks and talks at you... When you decided to marry him you had thought him something like a matesprit or the closest you can get in this awful species. But he would calm you in your rages and just talk at you nonsensically for hours while you felt what might be contentment like he was your moirail then set up terrible pranks and egg you on like he was some kind of weak pitch then keep you from going out and killing each of your annoying, inferior but arrogant competitors as an ashen would.

Nothing made sense with him but you didn't hate him entirely, not all the time despite his constant vacillation. And then here you are another timeline and universe later.

He died the first time from being hit by the second meteor wiggler. You raised them alone being forced to learn the ugly, strange human customs and biology against your will until both of them left you and then you left the doomed planet. He only met the first child, the blue girl (the Maid, you refuse to think) and he adored her for the few days he shared a life with her before it was snuffed out. This time he's there for both of them and loves them even more than you remembered.

You tell the Colonel outright that he will be the real lusus of your adopted progeny (you refuse to raise the squishy, helpless, and disgusting aliens again). He acquiesces with a grace you never find in other males at this time and simply encourages your work. The other males may mock him but you don't defend him because he's proven himself very capable of getting back at them. It makes you laugh sometimes.

He made you laugh sometimes.

* * *

Long before you reach the manor you're hit by the mouthwatering feel of pain, distress, anger, horror in your psychic palate and you savor it until you realize that it's coming from your hive. You may torment the children and will be responsible for killing them when they've outlived their purpose but like hell will you tolerate some stranger coming into your space and taking your right.

You slam open the front doors with full force, knocking them off the hinges entirely. The nasty human disguise is fully shed and you take up all nine feet of the entrance while the screams stutter and all you see is blood.

Red blood, mutant blood, culling blood.

And your husband is-

Dead. 

Not on your fork but close enough. There's a small trail of clues but the picture is obvious. Some of his prankster's gambit props are around him, specifically the ones meant for slipping like oil and marbles, there's a gap in the railing from the second floor balcony that overlooks the set of entrance stairs, and he's gutted like a fish on the golden statue of your trident fork set up in the center like some kind of prize. A shitty prize.

Among the props are some billiard balls. A black eight ball stares up at you dripping in his acid tracts and abominable blood. You hear your master's laughter echo in the back of your head. You shouldn't have let yourself get attached. _Conditional mortality_ , the thrice damned rust blood grinned at you with all teeth as she died on your fork, You _will suffer. You will not die. Enjoy forever, bitch._

What a shitty joke.

Only then do you acknowledge the sobbing still coming from nearby and you turn your head slightly to get a better look at the two brats you're now stuck with alone. The Witch girl has the strange, clear saltwater running down her face and her eyes are puffy and red. She has her face buried in her knees from where she's crouched on one of the staircases. Doesn't speak a word but her emotions hammer at you like a particularly irritating construction site at sunrise.

Beside her, with his hand on her shoulder, is her brother. He's almost silent but murmurs to her under his breath. When he looks up at you, you find his face devoid of the tears his sister has but in its place is the bright spatter of your late husband's blood. It covers his clothes too and you know that he must have been near the fork when your husband fell onto it. They're dressed like they were about to go out.

The Heir, with his face covered in the Colonel's blood, doesn't cry. He looks sympathetic as if he were simply consoling his sister for a small loss and not the death of their father. You try to recall what you've bothered to take in about human psychology. They're both about seven Earth sweeps old. Perhaps this is shock.

You don't bother to comfort them. Sassacre may have but he's dead as they know intimately. That's what matters here.

Instead you say, "What a mess."

And don't think about how you'll never see your (twice over) human husband smile ever again.

* * *

Your late husband stands in the place of honor right before the massive fireplace of the manor's living block. Last time around you learned that almost all humans despise the taxidermy of their dead and were horrified at the suggestion to do so. This time you were prepared to do it yourself. It's not a pleasant job and you tell yourself it's because of the corpse handling.

You make his statue as you saw him. The Colonel holds his ridiculous joke tome in one hand and a cigar in the other. His agreeably flowing head hair is respectably groomed around him and his less agreeable face hair you tried to style in his preferred way to mostly success. The only thing you couldn't get right was his giant, full faced grin. Nothing came out right and you settled on a neutral expression. 

(Impaling isn't a pretty death, you would know, he died in agony.)

(This was punishment but not for him.)

Sometimes when you look at his body you get nostalgia for your old warship from before your enslavement. There you had preserved the heads of each of your personally culled Descendants along with the bodies of particularly memorable quadrant mates. All trolls, of course. You memorialized them from the small bits of sentiment you allowed yourself.

He was human and now he's dead. You honor him at least in this.

But your daughter has little respect for your husband's last gift. She mostly avoids the room like she avoids you except when forming her childish rebellions. You never allow the Witch to leave and hit back twice as hard each time. On occasion you've felt her presence near the fireplace when you're not there.

Her brother, on the other hand, seems drawn there. Many times you've found the boy in front of your husband's body, looking at the glass eyes (you keep the real ones preserved in your recovery block), or telling it about this or that ridiculous joke. Sometimes he just stares off into a world beyond this one.

A few times you've caught him holding the Colonel's hand, standing on the tome that’s supposed to be there and little fingers clutching your late husband’s sewn ones.

The Heir was covered in blood when you found them. He was there as Sassacre bled out. Stubby human youngling arms wouldn't have been able to even reach his dying father's hands if he tried.

It won't occur to you until much later how you've never seen your boy cry.

* * *

"Why did Dad die?"

You don't stiffen but it's a close thing. You daughter, the Witch, asks you this, hunched over the breakfast you made her ungrateful ass, glaring down like each time she stabbed at it she was stabbing at you. She wants to. 

You don't answer immediately, instead giving her enough time to stew in the fact that you don't have to answer her. Finally when she's about to ask again, you give her a shrug, "He was a pool who slipped on his own pranks and gutted himshellf."

"Why the fuck are you like this?" And now she's glaring directly at you. Grew a spine, huh, girlie.

"Water ya want? The treef or somefin?" 

One day you'll kill her. You'll enjoy it. You will look at her bright green eyes, so like the daughter you had a universe ago, and the way they spark their defiance and anger at you. You will remember holding her as a helpless infant, the Colonel's delight when he found her, teaching her how to put on her dresses and manage her humanly long hair. She's destined for slaughter.

"It was his fate," you say, thinking of green and gold, "Odds just weren't stacked in his finvor and he had to kick the water tank sometime."

His real crime was being with you. English allows you only his cursed gifts. 

"That's bullshit."

Both you and the girl turn to look at the last member at your kitchen table. Your son doesn't tend to involve himself in your arguments together unless he's pulling one of you to the side like some kind of kiddie auspistice. "Wadda ya spray, shrimp?"

He glances up at you, expression devoid of his sister's overt anger and chewing on the eggs you made. The bacon and sausages are gone but his pancakes are untouched, "You don't believe in fate. I don't think you believe in anything but revenge."

The Heir's almost right on both counts. The only thing he's missing is that your master is inevitable, there's no fate in any universe but there's him and his paradoxes. And your master is petty and cruel to make the loops revenge for what has yet to be done.

Fate is Lord English.

(Centuries and universe collisions from now another, yet the same, Heir won't believe in English either.)

(And, perhaps uniquely, he will be right.)

* * *

The Witch hates you.

This isn't a new feeling, it's one older than the existence of her species even. She hates you like the blue eyed girl you raised decades and a timeline and a universe ago did and it's a familiar feeling. A welcome one even. Before your exile you had scores of Descendants who hated you too in the minutes between meeting you and being culled in the fight to the death at the behest of your shared lusus.

You will kill her in the future as soon as her purpose is done and it will be satisfying.

(When the deed is done in a future distant to her and a blink of an eye to you, you will stand above the still warm corpse and find yourself thinking of teaching her baking and tossing her back on her bed when she falls asleep on her projects.)

(She will be the first and only child you kill that you raised yourself. You will tell yourself that you are satisfied.)

The Mai- the Witch fights you every step of the way. She constantly spews vitriol at you and you don't bother to hold any of your own back. The kid needs to grow up and get stronger anyway, if only to serve whatever purpose she has in this timeline. You asked once, in the other universe, when you would be required to kill the children. English merely said that you would know when the time was right. You had left that universe with the children still alive but doomed. There was nothing to be gained there. 

You hate her and raise her with the same vitriol. Your only restraint is from any grievous physical harm as that would be detrimental to your purpose. Everything else is fair game.

The only time the two of you can exist in the same spaces without the ongoing war is when her brother is there. He's a placating in-between if only because he will blithely roll right over any insinuations you throw at one another. She may hate you but she cares about the Heir enough to keep fighting near him. It's a pathetic lack of initiative. You will take the moments of peace, however.

* * *

The most disconcerting days are the ones when it's quiet. When the girl isn't actively fighting you and the boy accompanies you around the house. 

He enjoys braiding your hair during the times you let him. And you do. Stupid thing doesn't know he should hate you but you don't have to remind him right then.

Keeps him complacent.

Your son's presence fills the house in an off-color reminiscence of his father's. Filling the spaces between your meal block and laboratories and his sister's closed room with all manner of toys and sounds and little tricks waiting who knows how long for their next victim. Sneaks the flowers from his sister's garden to weave into your hair and you see them in hers too. The only sound in the house, sometimes, is his piano.

* * *

The turning point comes when you kill Sassacre's old not-lusus, the old white barkbeast he had named Halley. In the first timeline the barkbeast was killed by the Page's meteor birth and your husband would alongside it by bullet. Now neither happened but your husband died anyway for your crime of fondness and the beast lived on to be old and well loved by your children. You were indifferent so long as the children took care of it themselves.

They have barely entered adolescence when you and her fight, a real, actual fight, or real as much as you're forbidden from truly ending her potential as a Guardian and her own limited abilities. Her brother was out for his piano lessons. It's a single snide remark too many that rapidly devolves into a screaming match as she curses your existence, vitriol on your species and your growing Earth bound empire. She accuses you of things you have yet to do. 

She blames you for Sassacre's death. 

You wouldn't have let any of that slide but the final accusation strikes a fiery rage in you like you've never known before. 

Between clenched teeth you hiss, "Care to repeat that, gill?"

"It's true isn't it?" her smile is wild and all blunt, human teeth, "You killed him! It's your fault Dad's dead!"

His face flashes in your mind, the first time you saw him in this second universe with warm eyes and the most infuriatingly charming smile. You hear in your head the voice of your master's as you did in that moment, _You're rather fond of him, aren't you?_

You may not have bled him yourself but his death was no less personal. You knew what his association to you would do to him but you married him anyway. She's right, even if she doesn't know how, and you hate her for it. You hate her. In a flash your trident appears in your clenched fist.

She tenses her little body like she's going to actually fight you despite not even being the length of your arm and you very nearly squash her like the bug she is. But you're struck by a better inspiration. 

Instead you whistle and the white barkbeast comes running teeth bared, ensnared in your bronze beast-controlling abilities.

The Witch pales, gaze switching rapidly from the real threat, you, to her companion growling at her.

"Halley?" she whispers, voice small.

It's on the tip of your tongue, the command to _Attack_. To make her own beloved lusus-pet tear her apart. But your master holds your words like he holds your mind and commands you to leave her unharmed as you burn impotently with all consuming rage. So with your double fork gripped in your bone white fist you give another command, one you know will hurt her just as much.

Will hurt her more.

Unheeding of the girl's low begging, the beast instead turns to face you and the lowered prongs of the fork before running forward at full speed and impaling himself on the points. 

The Witch howls as if stabbed herself but you keep her back with your telekinetic tendrils as the beast keeps going forward on the blades. Her screaming doesn't let up until the very end.

When it's over and the barkbeast is dead on your fork, you speak low through still clenched teeth, "Did ya learn your lesson, shrimp?"

She glares at you mutinously. Her face is covered in wetness and her wild, dark hair clings to it. 

"I'll kill you," she promises.

"You can't," you say. Because it's true.

* * *

You come back to a house emptier yet again and your only remaining child isn't covered in blood this time but his expression is the same. Polite and vaguely empathetic that your black woolcattle got the final word for now and completely ignorant to the fact that his sister left him, too, alone for good this time. He weathers your fury with few remarks. Watches you destroy the Witch's abandoned belongings like he isn't just as cast off as the clothes and hair adornments and toys she left.

The Heir looks at you with the pity unique to his kind, the type that somehow precludes a culling and for a moment you remember your husband the first go around the one time he saw your rage over your lost species. He has no right to pity you. He never once mentions his sister's betrayal of him as well as you. 

The expression barely changes even after you try to slap it off him. 

With a face a little blanker but still so damnably sympathetic, he takes you by your hand, small adolescent human paw to your full glory fuchsia blood claws, and brings you to the recital block with the grand piano. You watch the bruise taking up half of his face darken and the candy red blood drawn from your claws ooze slowly down his neck as he plays symphonies one after another nonstop. Neither of you leave the room for the rest of the night.

In the morning your son sits next to you on a stool in the kitchen while you bake a single cake instead of the flurries of experiments and perfections you tend to make in batches. The nail gouges on his face are treated and covered and he holds a cold compress to the blossomed bruises. He's quiet while you perfect the swirls of blue frosting on top and the smile he gives you when you cut him the first piece right after finishing is less toothy than usual. It's still wide enough to reopen the split in the side of his lip.

The boy's absurdly small sitting at the island of the kitchen meant to house your true form. Doesn't stop him from leaning his head on you when you settle next to him with your own slice. You're almost startled when he speaks, voice rusty from lack of use,

"Just you and me, now, Mom."

* * *

Months later your son looks at you for a long moment following the question you didn't ask. He has a pull between his eyebrows and slant to his mouth and never have you wished to be able to read human minds as much as this moment. They've always been remarkably easy to read once you know their tics and your Heir generally wears his thoughts and emotions like they're bold print clothes. Until he doesn't. 

Finally he speaks slowly, as if trying to explain a simple concept to a wiggler or particularly stubborn idiot.

"I'm here because you're my mom." Then as soon as the words are put between you but before you truly register them, John breaks into his great, big, doofus grin, "And besides, someone's cod to keep an eye on you!"

You roll your eyes and run your hand through his hair as he squawks. You don't think about how one day, in some unknown but inevitable future, you will have to kill him.

* * *

He's sixteen when he stays after school and comes home with a grin not for you. His mind stutters when you feel it. John will make himself weaker than he already is. You will not have it.

"Tell me her name," you say

He does. Eyes on your own, voice steady like the day his father died, like the day his sister left him. Your son.

You gift him a new pair of glasses the next week because he's a growing guppy and never said a word about how the girl didn't show to school again and never will. The first day with his new glasses he complains of a headache before falling asleep so you have them adjusted. He smiles again and it's just for you.

* * *

John still brings you flowers randomly. You don't understand the custom (except you do) but tolerate it all the same. How he likes to brush through the full extent of your true hair, the mass of which is bigger than himself several times over, and then braid in the small floral pickings. They're not always, but often, blue like his eyes.

"Forget-me-nots," he chirps at you, "So you'll forget me not!"

"I dunno, guppy, you're pretty forgettable," you grin back as he fusses and runs his hands through his ruffled hair.

A few hours later you'll find that some of the flowers he braided in were actually prop that squirted blue goo when pressed, or brushed, and despite being in your blue stained ablution block you can't even find it in yourself to be too upset.

You'll tell him it was a shitty prank anyway but he'll grin.

* * *

"Well this one almost has a face now, bluuuh."

You very nearly then do not refrain yourself from throwing the glass beaker in his direction. Near his direction. The glass shatters against the wall. 

"C'mon, Mom, you don't have to throw a fit. Trying to replace me I guess," John mutters, knowing full well that your hearing is more than adequate enough to know what he's saying. He's a little shit like that.

The kid's nudging one of the failures with the toe of his boot, a look of vague disgust on his face. The mock grub had indeed formed something that could have been a face if you had a blind person draw a face while you described an ass. The body was splattered from where you threw it onto the ground and ground it beneath your heel. Off color, not quite indigo but not quite cerulean, blood still coats the bottom of your boots. Failure a million and six.

You exhale out your nose sharply, "You know why I'm doing this, guppy."

"Yeah and it's weird and gross."

Even inside his head you can feel some suppressed irritation but not much more than that. Unfortunate. You're going to have to adjust his glasses further.

Humans are... both remarkably resilient and weak to mental manipulation at the same time. It'd be a true shame if you were to kill him before he's meant to. Your master would be furious and who else would appreciate your fintastic pun plays.

John keeps prodding at the malformed wiggler splat with his shoe.

"Hey, Mom?"

You grunt.

"Can we do somefin cooler? Like maybe go shoot some dogs?"

You sigh, looking at the mess of failures all around you. Disgusting. You need a Mother Grub but those are long gone and even if you had one, you lack the genetic material to propagate. Your master refuses you your birthright. It's not something that'll be fixed today. "Sure, twerp."

"Great! I got some movies lined up! We're going to have so much fun!"

"Water happened to krilling barkbeasts?"

He grins at you, sly like he thinks he got away with more than you let him, "I guess I'm not eeling it."

"Little bottomfeeder."

The rest of the day is spent blearily watching pedantic human moving films. It's only almost a complete waste.

* * *

Elation pings off the back of your head. You already know why. You hate it.

You refuse to turn around when he comes running into the kitchen with feet pattering against the tiles that make up the floor. You can reach down and cut through the grout between them like butter with your claws; you can hold one of them and slam it through his head and have jam to clean up. You can break his legs and he'll never leave you.

You do not. You make the glubbing cake.

"Mom!" The Heir calls out to you, "I got accepted! They think I'm good enough!"

Of course they did, of course you know. You knew when they considered him, when they passed him, every step of the way right up to this moment was in your power to stop and you. Did not.

There's no harm in letting the boy live out his comedian dreams in honor of your dead husband. (Or letting him smile just that much more.) Your Heir does not interfere with your work and you can grant him this much.

"Huh, they accepted a snapper like you, did they? I suppose the competition was carp," You say, not turning around from the mixture. Add the eggs, just the whites right now, slowly.

"Hey." He whacks your shoulder with some paper and you do not rip his head off, allowing him so much more than you should, "Be happy for me, Mom."

You shrug, "Yer not terrible as far as warm monkeys go. Betta ya than anotter bore."

John chuckles like you made a good joke, like one of his bad ones. Then silence.

You wait.

It draws on and you keep whipping the mixture knowing it's going to be lighter than you first intended. Finally you rise to the bait, "What now, kiddo? The fishes will fall for your dork ways. They betta."

"Ha."

A moment.

"I'm just worried about you."

That throws you for a loop. He of all people should know that you're more than capable of wiping out his planet and species in an instant if it weren't for your orders (if it weren't for him). You turn your head to look at him and he's fiddling with the acceptance letter, "Water ya mean by that, guppy?"

You reach into his mind and the worry is present there too. Not that you think he's even capable of consciously lying to you. He mumbles but it's bland, "Don't know if you're going to be okay on your own. Or if anyone else will be."

Ha. He got you there. But you won't be the one to stop him, "Go out and live your dreams, buoy."

You push. On his brain and the tiny bug inside his glasses.

"You'll be fine."

"I'll be fine," he repeats back to you. Dutiful. Then, "Will you?"

* * *

Your boy is cuter than you'd admit, sleeping like this. Sometimes you want to grip him in a claw and squeeze until all that's left of him is pulp and the knowledge that he'll never leave you. The Heir won't get the choice. In your moments of pity you know that you'll give him the clean, fast death that he deserves.

But for now John sleeps. He's the only human who ever appreciated the true way of sleeping. Neither of your girls cared at all for the recuperacoons you provided them and while the Page had tried, he left without it. But your boy will sleep in the coon as often as the bed these days. You didn't understand why humans did not and now you don't understand why he does.

"Kinda weird," he had proclaimed as a grub the first time you dropped him in and you thought that would be the last of it but then he tried again. And again.

The Colonel was... similar. Never quite enjoyed the coons but he had tried and on occasion would sleep in the one you had made for him. It was more satisfying than you had expected. And for that you had obliged his strange insistence to sleep in yours a few times, once in the past universe then more in this one. It was closer than you liked but not unbearable.

Still your husband hadn't let you immerse them when they were grubs and barely able to move. He was terrified of drowning them and the first time had kept the Maid away from you for the eight night cycles he had her until he died. And then, after finding the pistol wielding wiggler over your husband's corpse, you hadn't cared if they deserved the luxury.

This time he lived several years more and supervised the grubs' first immersions. 

He died anyway. The Witch refused to touch the cocoons.

These days the sopor slime does nothing for you true nightmares, there's no scratching the monster from your head when he exists in all forms, in all iterations of you. But the familiarity has its own benefits. You remember always feeling as though you were strangled during the times you'd sleep on Sassacre's platform at his insistence after more concupiscent affairs.

But today you are in your recuperacoon yet do not rest, instead watching the youngling you have been raising sleep in your coon beside you. So much larger now than he was as a grub but still pathetic compared to your magnificence. You could press him to your bosom, you could drown him and he'd die against your body, warmer than any troll, warm like your husband was. He will never leave you, you know, his destiny is to die for the session and yours to ensure that outcome. 

His life but a flicker among the eternities that made your reign and the more that made your exile but you feel every second of it and will feel his heart give out beneath you one day. A job completed with satisfaction.

But not today.

* * *

He does not bother you with his leaving. He knows to get his affairs in order by himself and that you have better things to do than help him pack and you do not trace his presence (thrice over in heat, mind, glasses) as he tracks through the house. You rarely visit all the blocks in the hive but he does.

The Heir doesn't tell you the day he's leaving nor where he will go nor where he'll stay. Who'll meet him if any at all. You don't ask. It's better for both of you that way.

(And, a small part of you hopes, if you don't know then perhaps your master will not care.)

(It's a senseless hope.)

Instead one day John sits behind you and weaves forget-me-nots into the expanse of your hair. The next the flowers are wilting and he's gone.

* * *

John's older now, thicker set with what humans call muscle but no one can tell under the ill fitting suits he seems to have an affinity for. His weird human fur is growing on his face in a mustache that looks just like your old husband and you think you hate it. There's more lines on his face than when you last saw him and you hate those more.

But when he grins at you and slouches down on your couch like he's never heard of posture, he looks just like the little monkey wiggler you raised. He could be waiting for you to sit on a sneakily placed plastic gas cushion again. You can't help but feel the seat with your psychic tendrils for a moment just to keep him from the satisfaction.

"So when were ya gonna shell me about the new grub ya have?"

John shrugs good-natured as always, "Ideally never but whoops."

"Whoops," you say flatly to him but you don't actually mind and he knows it, "Don't ya need like a girlie to be the baby mama? Got some wife hidden away too?"

"Could have adopted, you know," he says to your eternal befuddlement at these humans. The desire to seek out lusus-hood remains sickening. (Your attempts to revive your race have all failed). "But nah, don't have the time or want to marry anyone. James' mother didn't want him but I did so now I am a dad."

You can't help the small measure of satisfaction of knowing that, "Probs for the best. Don't wanna let anemone too close."

"Give yourself some credit, you taught me better than that," Your Heir smiles and it lights up his whole face but differently than it does when he's on his show or doing his ridiculous performances the human crowds seem to lap up. It's one meant for you and you devour it. He continues, "And while I'm at it. Don't you ever touch or talk to James."

A shark like grin cuts across your features in a way that's just for him too these days. He's the one of the only ones left on this god forsaken planet who knows you're not human and the other one is his bitch of a sister. "And whadda ya gonna do about that?"

"I'm not going to do anything because you're not going to."

His eyes are hard and his smile is slanting. He'll never be able to land a finger on you (but another him will, will be strong enough, free enough to face even her master) but he's got a backbone and strength that you miss from your dead kind. Maybe even more than them. You want to beat it out of him. You want to keep it forever.

"Waterver, he's not my concern."

Blue eyes, brighter and more pigmented than most of his kind because he may be human but only technically, search your unmasked face for any trace of a lie without any self consciousness. There isn't one because it isn't a lie. His little Descendant is of no matter to her; he's not a player nor a Guardian so she has no obligations towards him. And English won't care about this one human in the wake of destroying humanity. As long as she doesn't get attached to him.

John bares his teeth this time in a smile more fitting of his shows, content she isn't lying for now, "Whale what have you been up to now, Mom?"

You roll your eyes but go to tell him anyway.

* * *

You never attended many of his award ceremonies and even less now that even he can't keep track of all his invitations and people mistake him for your Ancestor. Still he'll send a letter every now and then bemoaning your lack of interest and a knickknack or two. Absurd and varied tokens from his shows, his 'accidentally' broken glasses or trick hammer or vial of mysterious black liquid you refuse to open.

One day a carrier arrives with a letter and a potted bunch of forget-me-nots.

You read the letter as the carrier is sent scurrying out. He's picked the flowers out himself in an effort to keep your attention, the letter complains, and to please try and care about it. The tongue in cheek lament you can hear from his written words make your eyes roll but the flowers go up on your desk anyway with a standing order for the staff to water it.

Months later they'll fall by accident and reveal they were intricately made silk fakes with artificial scents.

(He will fall over laughing no matter how many times you tell him it was a shitty joke.)

* * *

"So what's this new intern I'm hearing aboat?"

"Kid's name is Dave!" John beams and it's fonder than you appreciate for not being directed at you. Sometimes you think it's brightened with his whitening hair, "He's reel funny. Has big plans, ya know? I get the feeling he's going to make it big someday."

You barely nod at him, he knows you far more than you enjoy but some impressions are to be kept. The male Derse Guardian. The Knight. Perhaps a funny coincidence that he ran into your Heir but there's a certain pattern to the Game your master plays. Perhaps you could keep them from interacting too much? But no, even now you doubt you should interfere and John will find a way around you regardless. It's not like you can't smell the residue of his sister on him on the rare occasion.

You'll have to kill his new friend sometime. 

But it can wait. You won't have to keep John's face in your mind when he thinks you've failed him again somehow. As if you belong to him and not the other way around. The thought heats your blood and you fan it because it's easier that way to keep disappointing him.

"Uh oh, I know that face, me time is official not scheming time, Mom, what're you thinking about?"

"That you've let yourself go in your old age, guppy," You shoot back and he laughs.

There's spots and lines on his face and a tenderness to his walk that makes your staff hover over him even more than his fame. They ask you sometimes, when they're brave, how your "father" is doing and when he'll visit again. Your son thinks it's hilarious. You do not.

(Later, in the span of another lifetime of John's and but less than a blink of your eternity, you will kill the Guardian Knight and his sister and, with them, the last of humanity. You will watch their old and withered bodies bleed then drown with satisfaction.)

(And you will relish being the only one to know your Heir's smile once more.)

"I am old, Mom, I'm on my way out, I think," John grins full bodied as always, you see him young and gap toothed in the wrinkled, aged face and think again that you would have kept him with you forever like your helmsman if you could. But your lowblood was taken from you at the start and John will die before the middle.

_Enjoy forever, bitch_. 

"Don't know what you're gonna do when I'm gone," John sighs and a look passes in his eyes before you can read it, but his mouth tilts and it isn't quite a smile, "But you'll survive, I'm sure."

* * *

Like all his milestones since John left the household you raised him and his sister in, you learn that he's dead through the news. 

There's a certain, stupid pang inside you when you see it as a word scroll under some shit about the weather on a channel you don't care about, just have on to fill the silence. It's a similar feeling to when you found your twice over human husband dead for the second time in a second universe. You think it's anger when you bother to think about it. He belonged to you. They all did. Maybe it's luck you looked at the screen for the five seconds it takes to learn the news but you know better than to believe in luck. 

Struck by a meteor.

How original.

It means nothing to you. Except maybe a waste of time and effort on a single worthless human no matter what your master demanded of you. The Heir was a job and now he's finished. It's a pity (human pity, your kind of pity, who cares anymore) that you didn't get to finish him yourself.

(In some few, short human years later, standing above the body of his sister, your stupid, rebellious, glorious daughter, you feel satisfaction. That she's dead and not in your way anymore. That your job is this much closer to done. That you didn't have to kill John yourself.)

(It's not satisfaction.)

Two weeks afterwards his attorney finally contacts your estate with a letter from John's will. You idly make a note to get the man fired for inefficiency and destroy any future attempts at a career while you open the letter. It's heavy. He's always been foolishly sentimental.

The front reads, in his handwriting with the blue ink he always favored, 

_Mom_.

When you open it you find a stack of expensive creamy, heavy set paper folded on itself. Each one is blank as you thumb them open one at a time. You roll your eyes when there's a mess of blank paper at your feet and at the center is the cheap eight by eleven and a half inch kind made for printers that you buy hundreds in a pack. There's barely two sentences on it.

_to the biggest beach this world has ever or ever will sea,_

_fuck you._

Your lips quirk.

"Heh," you say, not thinking about the twinge you feel in your bloodpusher, "Good one, kid."

**Author's Note:**

> other working title: John Dies at the End


End file.
